What is it about Toy Story 3 that makes grown men cry?

[seabeyond]

Just for the record, I didn’t exactly cry – it was no more really than a wetting at the edge of the eyes, an ocular glistening that would have been visible to my children had they bothered to look around at me once in the cinema. And had I not been wearing those thick, black-rimmed 3D glasses. As it was, I can confidently say there would have been no need for the man collecting pairs at the end of Toy Story 3 to dry mine off with a towel.

My response was nothing on a par, then, with the reviewer from Entertainment Weekly who so described his reaction to the latest family blockbuster: “I’m not just talking about shedding a tear or two – I’m talking about that soppy, awkward thing where you make sounds”.

Apparently, he was far from alone. Toys are only supposed to make grown men cry when they tread on them in bare feet or else spot the price of Lego nowadays. However, they have been staggering from the summer’s great blockbuster at cinemas across America, wiping the tears from their eyes over this third instalment of Pixar Animation Studios’ acclaimed series about toys who secretly come to life.

*

A few American psychologists have been sifting through the adult emotional wreckage, looking for clues. It is all about memories of toys and leaving home, one said. Yes, but I doubt it’s about the sadness of leaving toys. As Andy initially wants to do, you can put them in the loft. Rather, it is because – in this respect – the toys stand in for the parents, who play a peripheral role in the film. If older viewers are upset, it is because the toys are showing them what it must be like to have been their mother and father – spurned, redundant and empty-nested when their chicks learnt to fly and flew. The tearful cinema-goer need only look across his row of seats and see the same thing waiting to happen with his own brood. The fact that those eventual parental emotions will actually be ones of unconfined financial joy and deep psychological relief hardly matters. Of course, it’s going to be moving.

Certainly, the film seems to have affected adults more than children. My 10-year-old daughter said she “snivelled a bit”, her brother, eight, said he “almost cried at the end…almost”. When I asked our three-year-old, he looked at me as if I were mad. I understand completely: Toy Story 3 is largely about crystallising the fleeting nature of childhood, which is something only adults and older children are likely to mourn. There is nothing more reassuring for a small child than to know that it won’t be this way for long.



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/7859472/What-is...


my 25 yr old nephew took his wife and 3 yr old daughter. i was told over the phone that his wife looked at him and said "are you crying? you are crying?". nu uh, he says. she gets out of the theater and told him, he was so busted.

well, i just picked up my two boys and a friend. my youngest, 13, was crying telling me the story. being the bad mom i am, i laughed so hard, i cried right with him. he then came home and googled why toy story was so sad and found this article. i thought i would share.

they all say it was a good movie.

i am looking for some insight from the guys. told son, between the adult nephew and him, i am going to have a really good thanksgiving day story to tell the family at the dinner table. my oldest son wants me to leave nephew alone. dont. know. if. i. can.

[Ozymanithrax]

1. That cusp where you look back at childhood one last time...

where you believe,
if for only a moment,
in those toys.

That moment where you cross over
into adulthood and leave it behind.

It is a very potent moement
and it can never happen again
a second time.

[seabeyond]

7. lovely

that is a lovely sentiment. thank you. interesting.

[reggie the dog]

39. what a drag that it is getting old

[Ozymanithrax]

43. Mother's little helper...

Man, it is a drag.

[Javaman]

45. Kids are different today...

I hear every mother say.

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. I don't think I should watch this. n/t

[depakid]

5. LOL- it really will make grown men cry

Haven't really pegged exactly why that is- perhaps nostalgia, remembrance of the rites of passage and fleeting youth- the whole being there for ya always type thing.

[seabeyond]

9. talking to my oldest, i thought maybe

that at a certain age, males are really encourage and beyond in repressing emotion. and this was a time when they were allowed their emotions.

like my and beyond part.... lol. i am good

[seabeyond]

8. you....

you are the one i really want you to see it. and then come back and talk to me. lol. i hear ya dude.

[lumberjack_jeff]

59. The author makes a lot of sense about "toys as proxy for parents"

The separation between boys and their parents is often messy, and the thought that their own kids will grow up and reciprocate hurts.

Of course, the difference is that when nostalgia strikes, Andy can simply go up to the loft to say hi to Woody and Buzz. Real parents leave for good.

It's all about guilt. It's why you see teary-eyed drunk guys singing along to "Cats in the Cradle".

[seabeyond]

62. ahhhhh. you and i

have talked about this before. but i love hearing from you. yes, that cats in the cradle song has always effected me strongly. and not for my own personal experiences, but cause i see exactly what you are talking about with males in their development and experience and societal pressures. my husband went thru the whole father/son father being too busy and never around and hubby really, kinda, secretly, not so secretly resenting it. to letting it go after we got married and really bonding and spending time with father. and the strong need from father to now connect.

[Kablooie]

3. I've still got Squeeky, my old panda bear from when I was 6.

He's the one thing I just couldn't throw away. He's in the shed and is ratty and dusty, but he's still there.

But Jimmy, the bear I had before Squeeky, I accidentally left on the railing of the Golden Gate Bridge.
When l ran back for him he was gone.
I have always carried the heavy guilt of knowing that I drove Jimmy to suicide.

Toys. You can't live with 'em, you can't live without 'em.

[seabeyond]

10. i told my crying son, i will box all his toys and keep them so he can give his kids

to comfort him tonight.

actually, my oldest has the stuffed animals, and he hasnt let me get rid of a handful. geeez. lol. i have to pack those up too.

[SoCalDem]

41. My 37 yr old son still has his airplane quilt/blankie I made for him

while he was in the hospital.. I made it by hand in waiting rooms & a dingy $6 a night motel room when he was in the hospital for 6 weeks..I think he was 5.. His wife kids him about it, but he keeps it draped across a chair in their bedroom ..He also has "Froggie", a beanbag frog that went to the operating room with him every time.. It still has the masking tape marking his room number on his last visit to Mayo Clinic/St.Mary's Hospital.

[seabeyond]

48. ok

i will make up a box for each, and put in attic. lol. i have a little bean bag dog been sittin on my kitchen counter for three, four years to sew up. maybe i ought to get on that too.

i have a croche blanket made by my grandma 45 yrs ago sittin in my room

i like that idea. i might give something like that a whirl. i like that you made something.

[SoCalDem]

68. I made a quilt from my youngest's soccer jerseys.. We had a LOT of them

He played from age 4, all through high school. It was quite colorful

Our middle son was not a "possessions" guy.. Most of his toys were left outdoors (by HIM) & "re-purposed" by strangers who came along and took them

Our youngest was also very into Masters of the Universe and we still have all of that stuff..still in original boxes..(he's always been a careful kid)...just watch..they will probably have daughters, not sons...his wife is a very girly-girl, so the Castle Greyskull will probably stay boxed for a while

[seabeyond]

70. isnt it amazing and wonderous the differences in each and every individual child.

i love it.

why i tell my boys, i cannot treat you exactly the same. it has to be individually. you know, when they are young. you would not allow me to get away with that. well.....

[Donnachaidh]

42. my teenaged son came home an emotional mess from this movie

And he was totally embarrassed about it. And he did cry for a while after he got home. We talked about it later and he thought it was because *back then* we didn't have problems. Of course we did, but we kept them from him.

But even I was shocked at how much that movie had rattled him. I think he'll feel better knowing he wasn't the only one having his emotions stirred like a stew.

[seabeyond]

49. isnt it something

this one is not so bothered about his emotions being visible. oldest was doing everything he could to get the younger under control. he felt so bad for him.

you tell your son, i will tell mine.

i am interested if any females were effected. i am really just hearing about the men adn boys. surely women and girls were seeing this movie too. i wonder if they were as effected.

[Donnachaidh]

55. kid said the girls that went with them were not as emotional

Both of us thought that was odd.

[seabeyond]

56. didnt do it to my niece either. she is 21. or her 3 yr old daughter.

hey are the only females i have heard from

[renate]

19. I gasped out loud when I read that

I am not being snarky when I say that I feel your pain.

I am still racked with guilt about deliberately pulling my teddy bear's tongue off when I was tiny. I remember doing it. And I still have that bear in my bedroom, on a chair because he is too fragile/loved to be moved around much.

I'm really sorry about Jimmy. I truly believe that he knows that you didn't do it on purpose.

[seabeyond]

21. i love the stories. so funny, ...

in the most precious way.

[Kablooie]

25. That may be why I have kept Squeeky all these years.

[villager]

4. I cried -- I watched it with both my sons. My eldest has grown with "Andy"

...approximately, watching TS I numerous times on VHS (!) back in the 90's, when he was in early single digits, and I was still married to his mother...

now he's taller than me, halfway through high school, on the cusp of leaving home, as Andy did...

Watching the film with him -- about the end of his childhood -- tore me up. Because it's all moved too fast...

[seabeyond]

14. ahhhh. they were telling me

about the end i guess. and the little girl with tea party, andy having a tough time handing over the cowboy.

i hear what you are syaing. my boys grew up with them too. we have the video of the first two and no vcr player. now youngest told me i have to rent the first two in cd so he can watch them again. tomorrow....

[walldude]

18. Hoo boy, I'm going tomorrow with my kids. My oldest will be a junior this year

All three of my boys grew up with Toy Story, the oldest is as excited to see it as the younger ones. I'm a huge sap. I get the feeling I'll need tissues.

[seabeyond]

22. let us know....

bah hahahah

i love it.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

6. The $9 adult tickets, $6 for toddlers. At 4 in the afternoon.

I agree with Ebert, it was the weakest of the three. They've been doing the whole "Gee whiz, Andy's outgrowing us, what are we going to do?" schtick for three films now, and they had to lay it on real thick for this one.

[villager]

12. -1

n/t

[seabeyond]

15. lol, if there is a way to dump..... lol. nt

[EOTE]

58. I agree. I kind of wish they had stopped at 2.

So many of the themes of TS3 seemed recycled from the first two movies. It seemed kind of a retread. And for the record, I DID cry during Toy Story 2. Sarah McLachlan doing Randy Newman's "When Somebody Loved Me" and the accompanied scene were too much for me.

[proteus_lives]

11. I'll admit it. I choked-up at the end.

Every little boy imagines his toys coming to life as a kid. You take your favorites and make totems out of them.

I'm sure little girls are the same way.

It was a great movie.

[seabeyond]

16. i would like to hear from the women too. i didnt feel an attachment

to my toys. i wonder if it is a gender thing. i had barbies and all, but i didnt feel the same way as my boys do with their stuff.

[Chulanowa]

24. All my toys were dinosaurs

And I was pretty sure that my "Definitely Dinosaurs" tyrannosaurus was possessed, because his eyes seemed to move



That's the bastard, there on the right.

[seabeyond]

26. my boys had the dinosaurs. lots. oldest spent a lot of time, a lot of years

playing with those. he would build a whole river system outside and play for hours. nothing more precious than listening to a little two year old clearly articulating these huge ass names.

those left the house a good number of years ago. and yes, was hard.

[Chulanowa]

27. Hah! You sound like my mom

She'd read the dinosaur books to me when I was little. And she's go "Beak, uh, berach..." and I'd roll my eyes and go "Brachiosaurus, mom"

She was convinced that I would know Latin by the time I was 12.

[seabeyond]

29. yup yup yup.... ah ha. so true. nt

[rocktivity]

13. One of the reviews I read said that "adults should bring handkerchiefs"

But I remember when my mother threw out of toy chest after two generations worth of storage. There was something special about watching my sisters' children playing with the toys their mothers and aunts had.


rocktivity

[seabeyond]

17. "adults should bring handkerchiefs"... lol lol, no way.

one of the traumas, cleaning out the closet. i save a few. they want me to save all. they are going away for a week and i plan to clean out again, ...... while they are gone.

[renate]

20. not me. I'm much more sentimental about my kids' animals than they are

I can let go of the plastic ones, but something about the huggable ones.... No. There's no way I could get rid of them.

I'm kind of pathetic.

[seabeyond]

23. oh no....

i have absolutely no attachment to things. i have three people in house that do. i just chuckle mostly.

[Pithlet]

36. i am the same way.

My husband has to do the cleaning out and donating. I don't think i'll be able to see this movie.

[seabeyond]

73. ah ha. really.

i love it.

[Kablooie]

28. Adults may need the handkerchief to wipe up the child's seat next to them.

The ending is more intense and serious than most children's movies.

[Newest Reality]

30. Could this be telling us something about our culture

that we need to know?

A Buddha, (one who is awake) can easily entertain both the state of the baby, the child and the adult without feeling a sense of loss or contradiction. How would the adult become such without the undifferentiated state of the baby or the innocent, interim stage of transition that we call childhood? In that sense they all go together and are one and interdependent.

Today's adult has to watch a movie or read a story that evokes an potentially strong emotion that demarcates and signifies a loss or severance from phases in development that are, in memory, artificially severed and clearly divided at some point.

The question is, is that natural or culturally induced, and how does it color and effect the actual maturity of the adults that populate and control this world, today? False premises and assumptions can go a long way, so maybe we need some fictive reflection to point with tears and even deep blubbering to what separates us from our wholeness and continuity for what seem to be pragmatic and realistic reasons, no matter how vague and subtle the process that brings us to this divisive result within and without.

[seabeyond]

31. i think so. this is more in line to what i was thinking, talking to my boys

watching them grow, and there own attachments. i was tellling my son, feels more like about the time they put away the toys, is about the time they are being beyond encouraged to put away the emotions too.

[Hawkowl]

34. +1

[lumberjack_jeff]

60. Insightful.

Why is childhood "lost"?

[seabeyond]

63. i think this is where we are seeing the gender difference. that i am more curious with. nt

[MellowDem]

32. I had tears streaming down my cheeks...

I couldn't remember the last time I cried, much less at a movie. It pushed all the right buttons. It definitely was a very nostalgic kind of feeling, not necessarily sad, more like the remembrance of a long lost friend; childhood.

It actually had me thinking about how in some ways it might have been nice back in the day when families stuck with each other all their lives and never had the stages of development our society as developed, with very defined roles based on age that you have to move on to, ready or not. And you lose your connections with your family. The good thing about today's technology is that people are able to stay closer even though they may be far away.

[seabeyond]

33. ah,

thanks for telling. all these posts will make son and nephew feel better. isnt that something. hm

[Mortos]

35. The scene that got to me most

***spoiler alert****



















The scene that really shook me was the one in which the toys, facing certain destruction from the smelting fire, joined hands and resigned themselves to their fate. I don't know why it affected me so strongly but it was a truly touching and emotional scene. I loved this movie more than anything I have seen in recent memory. The themes discussed here make sense and I have certainly begun to fathom my own mortality recently and maybe this movie just reminded me again how quickly time passes. Go see this movie and take your kids with you or your parents.

[jayfish]

38. Yup!

SPOILER
This is the scene that got me as well. It was so deftly done that everything boiled down to that moment. Everything they'd accomplished in all three movies. Everything they'd gone through and survived. Alone and apparently doomed. It really didn't look good at that moment. They turned to the only thing they had and let go. It was dreadful and uplifting at the same time

SPOILER

FSH

[SoCalDem]

40. So, this was the final frontier for Toy Story? n/t

[seabeyond]

51. i didnt see the movie, BUT

after all the crying i finally hear they end up at another little girls house. i asked son, well, if they went to another little kid to play with, why so sad.... and then there goes the tears. lol lol

[thelordofhell]

37. Totally off topic here

Have any of you seen the add for Covert Affairs on this site where the woman is wearing a shoe with a 10 inch pump that makes her foot look like a ballet slipper? It's ridiculous.

[Javaman]

46. ...

I love you!!! LOLOLOLOLOLOL

[Javaman]

44. The movie theaters pump in misted onion via the A/C at the end of the movie. nt

[seabeyond]

47. aH ha ha. lol, perfect. probably what my hubby would say

cute. thanks.

[superduperfarleft]

50. Hookay, well I'll definitely be renting this one. n/t

[seabeyond]

52. at home movie.... bah hahahah. that is funny. nt

[pipi_k]

53. And if you were a rather....odd...child, it may even be worse, I think...

When I was a child, I had favorite toys. Every so often, though, I would get a terrible pang in my heart for the toys I didn't play with so much. Like they would feel ignored or hurt or something.

I still can't watch the Christmas cartoon, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" without tearing up at the scene on the Island of Misfit Toys where Charlie in the Box says he's going to go to bed and dream of next Christmas and the little dolly sadly says, "I have no more dreams left to dream". That one always sent me sobbing into another room.

I'm 57 but still somehow believe that toys come alive when we're not looking...

[Evasporque]

54. They do...MWUAHAHAHAHAH

[pipi_k]

61. My favorite....

[seabeyond]

57. oh no.... that is so cute

i love these stories. i just have never felt this way about stuff.

[slampoet]

64. Toy Story 3 is the first Awful pixar film. don't know what the rest of you suckers are sobbing about

[seabeyond]

65. i guess you answered your own question. you dont know.... nt

[mod mom]

66. Not a man, but to me it was about the thought of my kids going away to college (& they're only 12 &

14. We went home and dug out the "treasure" boxes and although they contained many special toys, papers & books, their toy story toys were given away. My daughter even researched & found original toy story toys on e-bay, like the ones they owned but I had to put my foot down.

[seabeyond]

67. my son went looking then asked for the old toy story toys. i didnt have them

gave them away. to great of toys to keep in a box, lol. i kinda wish i had saved them.

did you cry?

[jayfish]

69. Same Here.

My 10-year old son had bunches of TS stuff and it's mostly gone now. He is in the process of rebuilding his collection with allowance money. This is really a transcendent movie.

FSH

[mod mom]

71. Yes, I cried as did both kids.

My guess is hubbie would have also but he was out of town on business and hasn't seen it yet.

[seabeyond]

72. ah. thanks. i wasnt hearing from any of the women. nt

[Nye Bevan]

74. I'm glad I'm not the only one. So two movies in my whole life have made me cry.

"Toy Story 3" and "Ghost".